PODCAST | Strategies For The Reformation Revolution (feat. Anthony Delaney)

Resources:

For more resources, visit
https://anthonydelaney.com/about/
https://www.launchcatalyst.org/

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Transcript:

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, hey everybody, today is going to be a great episode. My good friend Anthony Delaney from across the pond is coming to us. He would say we're the ones across the pond, we left the pond, but from the UK. And it's a wonderful conversation about why if you are in the United States doing ministry, you can see into the future and strategize about the future by learning what Anthony's having to do now in the post-Christian world in the UK. Listen. You'll be glad you did and God will stretch your thinking.
Hey everybody, so glad that you made it with me today. Our guest today is making an extra effort to be here because I'm recording at noon and it is 7:00 PM your time, Anthony, or 6:00 PM?

Anthony Delaney:
It's 6:00 PM.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yes, 6:00 PM. Anthony Delaney is a friend for the last three years or so, and Anthony is in Manchester, England. Some of you who are listening or even watching would know Dave Ferguson and the NewThing Network. Anthony's been tied into that group for a long time and church planting. We got connected through Dave and I got to go over to a conference in the UK. In fact, it was the last trip I made in 2019 before the world fell apart in 2020 and just got to see a wonderful, wonderful thing that God's doing over in the UK.
God is expanding our vision for what he wants us to do at Vanderbloemen and part of that is thinking more about the church. Years ago it was like, hey William, the church is more than people who gather on Sundays. So we started a school practice for Christian schools and a nonprofit for Christian nonprofits and work with for-profit companies that function sort of like the Chick-fil-A's of the world. And then God kind of brought to my mind again, said, why are you so self-absorbed and just thinking about the US? And we've done a little bit of international work over the years, but then we say, well, let's get a little more intentional about building relationships. And one of the first people I met was Anthony. And I thought, as we start to introduce you to our international friends, the very first person I wanted you to meet was Anthony. So Anthony, thanks for taking time to spend with us today, especially on a Friday evening.

Anthony Delaney:
Hey, it's such a pleasure, William. It always is great to spend time with you and your team. You're always an inspiration to us and it's fantastic.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah. Yep. Well, I would love if you would tell a little bit of your story. Some of you may know Tim Gocha, who heads up our entire consultant team here. Tim's life before ministry was he was a cop, he was a police officer. And I'd love to hear your story, how you ended up in ministry and really tell people, I think some of the things you've done at your church in Manchester are actually more innovative than what we've done here. So I'd love to hear start to where you are now. Tell us a little of your story, Anthony.

Anthony Delaney:
Cool. I've just gone and reached to go and get this off the shelf, which is the-

William Vanderbloemen:
That's amazing.

Anthony Delaney:
That's the helmet that I used to wear, the Bobby's helmet, you might call it, when I was a police officer here in Manchester.

William Vanderbloemen:
That's amazing.

Anthony Delaney:
I always wanted to be a cop when I was a little boy. That was the dream. Joined the police cadets when I was 16, which was, I suppose, like a army cadet kind of thing. Then at 18 and a half I became a fully fledged police officer here in the center of Manchester. Did that for 10 years. As a police officer, I was on the riot squad, the drug squad, various things like this. And it was during that time I met my wife Zoe, and she was a Christian believer. I didn't really have any faith in anybody except myself, which was not a great thing to have faith in, to be honest with you, because I'm not qualified to be God, it turned out. And then from there I made a commitment to Jesus Christ. I started to go along to an Anglican church, became later on ordained as an Anglican vicar and was involved in different kinds of churches down in the south of England.
And then 15 years ago came back to Manchester, back to my home city, which is about a 3 million population, and took on a church there which is now called Ivy Church, which has been going for over a hundred years here in the city. And we took on one old building and had one or two services on a Sunday morning. And since then we've grown out in lots of places and we've planted out in many places and some of them still retain some connection to us as Ivy and many of them are more like the kids that you kind of wave off and they grow on their own. And in the end, it's just a privilege to be able to help to encourage other people to raise up disciples that make disciples, leaders who grow other leaders, churches that plant churches. That's really what we're about.

William Vanderbloemen:
One of the things I love that you've done, I think since we met in 2019 is the way you're using your space. You have less dirt in the UK than we do in the US, so space is at a premium. Tell us a little bit about how you utilized your space so that it's functional throughout the week.

Anthony Delaney:
Yeah. Just before the whole lockdown thing, we'd just begun negotiation on, we partnered together with a cricket club and a lacrosse club. We went into a collaboration with them and then we approached the city that we would invest in their facilities and that we would buy the land. They only building that they really had on there was a horrible, really, sort of drinking hole of a place, a bar. And we took that on. We invested money from it as a church into it. We've made it into a sports center. We built a new changing room, facilities, et cetera, for the sports team. And we bought the land off the city. They gave us an incredibly low price because they loved the vision of this collaboration and connection for everybody to work together for the good of everybody.
So now we do services there on a Sunday morning and in various times as well, but at the same time, I was just in there earlier today, we have a cafe that's open in there. People come into the coffee shop. We have friends that are coming in there for various things. We just opened up, I just posted on my Facebook page actually, a sensory room in there for children who are autistic just to help them to be able to have a place where they can through light and different space in there, like a soft center. There's kids going in there now. They have to book and it's properly established.
I just heard a miracle story from there. One little boy who I think was about seven or eight years old who's never spoken a word, he came into our sensory space just the other day and said his first word in there. He said, "Magical." That was the word. His mom was just in tears because it's the first word she'd ever heard her son speak. And I think it's a healing place for sure. So we have this large piece of land. We don't maintain it. The cricket club, they maintain it. We just get to use it and we've done outdoor things for the community on there. So yeah, it's a partnership for the good of everybody with the church right at the center of that connection.

William Vanderbloemen:
It's almost like, I know you know Dave Dummitt of the NewThing network, and he started a church called 2|42 in Michigan where, I'm not going to get this quite right, but they basically built community centers that happened to have church on Sundays. And it's almost that sort of model. The trend here is to have work, life, and play in one place now, multi-use places, and I think churches are starting to latch onto that. But I would encourage you guys, we'll put in the show notes a link. Maybe we can even get a link to that video you have of the wonderful use of the place, might inspire people to think a little bit differently. I just loved that the church in the country that we started in is being more innovative than us pioneers in the West in doing these things. I guess the only danger, maybe you have to schedule around it. Here, if we had a, I'll say football, but I mean soccer match at the church, that's fine. But I guess if you have a cricket match that starts on Friday, it could bleed all the way into Sunday.

Anthony Delaney:
Well, yeah, they do go on. Just recently we established what we call a micro church. There was some guys from the church who started to reach out to their friends and neighbors, they did alpha courses, et cetera. And one of the ladies who came to Christ through that, we recently baptized her at the sports center, but she was there, gave her story of how she'd come to know Jesus, et cetera. Then we put the baptistery that we'd got outside on the carpark as the cricket game was going on. And this woman was baptized while everybody was watching the cricket. For a while, everybody stopped watching the cricket to see this woman being baptized. And it was an amazing picture of all these worlds colliding together and a new believer and the church celebrating and clapping and cheering. Something that's, to be honest with you, way better than cricket as far as I'm concerned.

William Vanderbloemen:
That's fantastic. That's great. Hey, let me ask you this. I don't know that I agree with this, but you go to Europe, not so much in England, but other parts of Europe, you see former churches that are now bars or art museums or businesses and a lot of the, maybe you could call it realistic, maybe you'd call it pessimistic futurists here in the states say if you want to see what the church in the United States it's going to look like in a hundred years, 50 years, just look at Europe. It's post-Christian. So let's just for kicks assume they're right and we now get to interview somebody 50 years ahead of time that's already doing ministry in your context. What should we in the states be learning from you who are in arguably a post-Christian culture in the UK? What are some of the things you're having to face that maybe we're not yet?

Anthony Delaney:
The key one, there is a place I went to recently, which is now a climbing center and people go in there and I realized as I pulled up that it used to be a church. It just hit me when I went in there, because it's full and there's people in there, lots of young people in there, but they're now doing climbing. That's what they're doing in there. And on one of the walls, it was like somebody had painted up many years before, "Without the vision, the people perish."
And I thought, wow, there you go. At some point that church had a vision and it grew. At some point it took its eyes off the vision and it stopped thinking that we're actually here to help people to find their way back to God, to help them to become full on disciples, not just to be churchgoers, not just to come into a service and sing your song and leave, but actually to in some way be the light of the world that's going to shine in the darkest places. And people took their eyes off that vision and maybe they got all kinds of other vision for what church was about, but in the end, if we're doing it the way Jesus says, he said the gates of hell are not going to prevail against his church that he's building. I think that to some extent we can't just expect that people will want to come in.
It's certainly not the case in the UK. We've got to be prepared to go out and we have to be the city set on a hill that can't be hidden. And people are attracted to that. I think, too, our messaging very often has to be one of hope. In 2 Peter, he said, always be ready to give everybody who asks you the reason for the hope that you have. And I think that above all else, it's so easy these days to get pulled into the fights and the arguments and the binary this or that of culture. And in the end, whatever your views are on particular political issues or whatever, and I'm not saying those things don't matter, but in the end, if we don't get to be heard as the voice of hope, whatever is happening, then why should anybody come to what we are doing and be interested in that? So I think that we want to do that.
So as we expand out into the future, it might be that we use old church buildings that somebody else used to use. Literally on the other side of the road from me, down the road, there's now an old church that for many years now has been a mosque. It's grievous to me, I have to say, that an old church, a Christian Church would now become a mosque, but in the end, the church is not the building anyway. The church we need to recover is the people.
And the question for me that we also have to stop so much asking is less how many people are coming to your church, because all you're going to get out that message maybe is churchgoers and all I've got to do is be a little bit better than the church down the road to compete with them, whereas in fact, the better question is how many people are going from your church? How many people are going with this mission? How many people are going to go and make a difference for Jesus in their workplace, in their schools, in the family, places that God's put them? And how are we helping people to be equipped to fulfill all the destiny that God's got for them? We've got to make the switch from trying to get churchgoers to actually help people to see church, go. We need to be churches that go and make the difference.
And when I say that that's going to be small, medium, large, it doesn't matter. What matters is are people on fire, are they inspired? I think anybody who now in this nation, it's probably the same in yours, William, who's choosing to come back to church from the time when they couldn't meet. I mean, I don't know what it's like. I know different states have different rules, but here in the UK there was times when we just literally could not open the doors of church so that people could come in.

William Vanderbloemen:
No.

Anthony Delaney:
And that was for a long, long time. So now people who are coming back, I think we can't over-challenge them. I'm like, look, you made the decision to come back here. What are you coming here for? And we can set a high bar on discipleship rather than go back into consumer mentality of we are so glad you came, here's your free coffee, we are going to look after your kids. You don't have to do anything, you just come and we'll love on you, et cetera, et cetera. And I think actually what we can say to people is, we're so glad you came. Now let's help you to go in the power of the spirit and make a difference for Jesus.

Christa Neidig:
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William Vanderbloemen:
That's so good. My mind's racing now because I'm thinking, in the states there are these models, the attractional model, like let's build a service where I can invite my own church friend. And then there's the missional model of no, let's train disciples and send them out into the world. Both models have the same goal. All we want to do is overpopulate heaven. So in the states we're still doing some attractional and it's moving toward missional. If you guys are a picture of 50 years in front, how do you design your service? Do you guys sit and concern yourself with, well, what if Emma, your daughter, brings her friend that doesn't go to church? Are they going to feel like they're an outsider or not? Does that come into play or is it more about, nope, let's equip who we have and if visitors come then they can just look from the outside. How do you approach that?

Anthony Delaney:
I think we do both. I think there's nothing more attractional then being incarnational. [inaudible 00:16:46] into two different things and incarnational literally means we want to be like Jesus to the people who come. We want to want to be the body of Christ with people who come in. And so a lot of that, I think most of it is putting ourselves in the position. I do try and put myself in the position of that guy I used to be way back in the day, in my early twenties, who didn't care at all about the things of God, but somehow in some way started to get interested through a relationship enough to be able to check it out. We want to meet those people where they're at and speak their language in some way and connect to them, but then challenge them as to not stay there, but what's the next step for you?
I mean, we've produced some materials. I've done various things. We have a thing called Knowing, Growing, Going, which is helping people to look at a booklet or watch a YouTube video. You can know God personally, you can grow as a Christian and here's how. It's by loving God and loving other people. And then you can go, you've got a story to tell other people. We have a thing called Discipleship Pathway. It's available on RightNow Media. Some of your people might know about RightNow Media. There's a session I've done on there called Discipleship Pathway and it's really to help people, wherever they're at, there's another step. Somebody could have been in church 30 years, but really they've been in church for one month many, many, many times. They've not actually grown as a Christian in all that time. They've not really grown as a disciple. They've put the years in.
But in terms of what are we actually doing to obey, and I think this is the challenge I want to bring to people is look, obey to the level of your understanding. What are the things that you know God's saying to you and what are you going to do about them? And for some people who are brand new to that, actually they're more ready for a challenge than somebody I've found who's been in church 20 years. We can take that person who's new and open, who's saying, hey, what's this going on? And give them a high bar challenge. Jesus did it with a rich young ruler. He was like, okay, this is what I want you to do. And he gave him a high bar challenge. I've read something that said that some scholars believe that guy might have actually been John Mark. That he came back and he's kind of writing himself into the story a little bit, because he's the guy who run away naked in the garden too.
Those of us who are listening to this who know their Bibles, there's this guy who's kind of saying, actually Jesus high bar challenged me and I walked away, but what if he came back? So yeah, I think we can appropriately challenge people and really a lot of it is just we should talk in today's language in a way that Jesus did. And that I think is a key. I think very often churches can think that real discipleship is making things complicated whereas actually, I remember years ago, somebody saying that Jesus came to make mysterious complicated things simple and ever since then, the church has gone and done it the other way around.
We try to make it that the longer you've been here, the more you need to know. That you need to know Greek and you need to know Hebrew and you need to know this and all of that. And it just puts people off actually doing what they know.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah, yeah. Well, that's great wisdom. You have stretched my thinking. For those of you who don't know, Anthony actually is leading a bit of a movement over in the UK and has a conference. I'm going to get a chance to go visit there this year. It's going to be a lot of fun. It's called the Launch Conference. I spoke at it in 2019. I'd forgotten until you told me. What was the theme in 2019?

Anthony Delaney:
Go viral.

William Vanderbloemen:
In November of '19?

Anthony Delaney:
Yeah.

William Vanderbloemen:
Didn't you teach a thing? Tell the story you told me [inaudible 00:20:59].

Anthony Delaney:
Yeah. Actually one of my teachings at it was I kind of did a hypothetical. We were looking at Paul and Barnabas and those guys and how they took the gospel and went from Antioch and how it spread everywhere. And I said it was like a virus and they were like the guys who had the high R number that was going to go and spread it. And I showed a model I found about how hypothetically if a virus started in the far east, maybe in somewhere like China, how that could then spread out in the nations and what it would need some people who were highly infected to go and travel around the world, and before long it would be everywhere. And I showed these pictures in 2019 at a conference called Go Viral, and I still kind of keep expecting maybe the CIA or somebody are going to come and ask some serious questions.

William Vanderbloemen:
Oh, that's funny. Oh, once a cop always a cop. Yeah. So now we just need to take your gift of prophecy and find a really great positive message for this year's conference. But it is coming up in November, you expanded it to two sites, and I would imagine there's a virtual experience too for people in the states that want to-

Anthony Delaney:
Yeah, definitely. People will be able to get the digital download of all of the talks. We've got various people that are coming. We're not announcing all the speakers yet. For those of you in the states, you're going to know James Emery White is coming for sure as well as William, and many of you might know James Emery White. He just speaks wonderfully into culture. He's a guy who's always ahead of the curve and just looking around it and helping us all. And he's a friend of launch, he's been along a few times to it. Launchcatalyst.org is the website and people are free to look on there. And if you can possibly get to the UK around the end of October, beginning of November, North and South, we'd love to see you.

William Vanderbloemen:
Oh, I was blown away. Dave Ferguson's wisdom to introduce me to you. I thought for sure our first international office would be in London and Dave said, just go visit Manchester. Just go take a look. I mean, London's cool and gets all the headlines, but Manchester, that's a hidden jewel. And I was so glad I went. This time, my son will officially kill me if I don't do some fun things. Last time I think I came on the day I was speaking and missed the chance to go to, I think it was the Man City-Liverpool match. And he couldn't believe that I passed on that. So this year we'll have to maybe fix that a little bit.

Anthony Delaney:
For sure. Yeah, no, we'll do that. We'll look for the fun. Obviously the fixtures aren't there yet, but we'll keep our eyes open.

William Vanderbloemen:
Yeah, yeah. Well, before we wrap up, I thought it might be worth pointing people toward your website. What's the domain for your blog?

Anthony Delaney:
I mean there's a couple. You could look on ivychurch.org because there's lots of our previous talks and teaching all available on there for free and we put everything on YouTube. I do a blog called anthonydelaney.com, which is pretty easy to remember. If you can remember my name, you can remember that. I want to continue to do more of that. I'm interested also just to connect with people and pray into the whole thing of how churches are going to be in the future. And for me, William, just again to underline staffing and culture and leadership are so key to those things, which is why I'm delighted for our connection and the things that I learned from you and you guys.
Excited to hear about your new publishing ventures. I don't know what more you're saying about that for the future, but we'd just love to learn from you guys as well because your book Culture Wins has been something that I've turned to again and again to help us to recognize the value of getting the right people on your team and effectively building something that people love to be part of so that they're just willing to serve.
In my world, as they often say in church circles, I don't have a carrot, I don't have a stick. And so ultimately we have to build cultures that people love to give their best to and to be a part of. And I just commend to anybody, while I'm on here, your book on Culture Wins for sure. It doesn't just tell the story of what you've done, but also has helped our story as we go forward.

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, and what a great time to get to, I mean, we can reset everything now. We had a pandemic. You can just blame the pandemic. Oh, we had to get rid of that, you know, the pandemic. We had to start something new because, you know, the pandemic. And hopefully we can work on building better workplace cultures together both here and in the UK and then abroad. I don't want people to leave without going to Amazon and looking for you. A couple great books that I've seen, The Man You Were Made to Be and The Best Marriage. And if you just, Anthony Delaney and Amazon, you'll find them there. I think Moody Press is the publisher.

Anthony Delaney:
Both published by Moody, so available widely through them. One of them is a discipleship book for men, looks at different facets of a man's life. It's things like fitness and finances and family and failures and lots of things beginning with F that we all need to grow. I'm not saying in any way I'm perfect and that would certainly be the case with regards to the marriage. I'm not saying I have the best marriage, do everything like me. I'm saying that I've realized over 35 years of being married, things my wife has taught me, that there are practices, there's things that we can build in that will help what is for me my most important earthly relationship to be one that is the best it can be and the way that God designed it.

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, I can say to everybody listening today that Anthony will stretch your thinking and I would encourage you to just stretch your thinking for whatever vision God has in your life, in your ministry, for your church. I think I never do a good enough job of dreaming as big as God has, and he keeps stretching my sense of things. We've done some work in Dublin and we've done some work in Asia and we've done work in Australia and Latin America, but only because it just happened to come and God kept saying, no, William, you need to intentionally start to plan to expand because my church is bigger than the US.
And I don't know if that speaks to you as you think of your mission work. I don't know if it speaks to you about partnerships or even today just learning new strategies from somebody who frankly is a little farther into post-Christendom than we are. But I hope that this was a moment where you might stop and say, God, just stretch my thinking. Just stretch my vision to match yours. And Anthony, you've done a lot for me already. I can't wait to see where God leads us in the future. Thanks for making time for us on a Friday night. Appreciate it. If you heard the sirens in the background, those were not prearranged because we have a cop on. They were just God's sense of humor, smiling on us.

Anthony Delaney:
They're playing my tune.

William Vanderbloemen:
Anthony, it's always a joy. Have a great evening and a great sabbatical and we'll look forward to seeing you across the pond here in the fall.

Anthony Delaney:
Can't wait. Thank you, William.

Christa Neidig:
Thanks for listening to the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast. At Vanderbloemen, we help Christian organizations build their best teams through hiring, succession, compensation, and diversity consulting services. Visit our website vanderbloemen.com to learn more and subscribe to our Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts to keep up with our newest episodes. Thanks for listening.